NASA Spacecraft Snaps 1st Photo of Mercury from Orbit

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The first spacecraft ever to circle Mercury has beamed home the
first-ever photo taken of the small rocky planet from orbit,
showing a stark landscape peppered with craters.

NASA's Messenger spacecraft snapped the new Mercury photo today
(March 29) at 5:20 a.m. EDT (0920 GMT). The photo shows the stark
gray landscape of southern Mercury, a view that is dominated by a
huge impact crater. [ See
the first photo of Mercury from orbit ]

"This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit
about the solar system's innermost planet," Messenger mission
scientists explained in a statement.

The new Mercury photo shows a region around the south pole of
Mercury. A 53-mile (85-kilometer) wide crater called Debussy
clearly stands out in the upper right of the image, with bright
rays emanating from its center. [ More
photos of Mercury from Messenger ]

A smaller crater called Matabei, which is 15 miles (24 km) wide
and is known for its "unusual dark rays," is also visible in the
image to the west of the Debussy crater, mission managers
explained.

The new Mercury photo was posted to the
Messenger mission website managed by the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory, which is overseeing the
flight for NASA.

The photo is the first of 363 snapshots Messenger took during six
hours of observations around Mercury. The images are expected to
cover previously unseen areas of Mercury, terrain that was missed
by Messenger during three previous flybys before it entered
orbit.

The spacecraft paused in its Mercury photo reconnaissance work
just long enough to beam the new images back to Earth, mission
managers said.

"The Messenger team is currently looking over the newly returned
data, which are still continuing to come down," Messenger mission
scientists said.

NASA plans to hold a teleconference with reporters on Wednesday
to review the latest Mercury discoveries by the Messenger probe.
The spacecraft's name is short for the bulky moniker MErcury
Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging.

The $446 million Messenger probe is expected to spend at least
one Earth year
studying Mercury from orbit. The spacecraft is in an
extremely elliptical orbit that brings it within 124 miles (200
kilometers) of Mercury at the closest point and retreats to more
than 9,300 miles (15,000 km) away at the farthest point.

The primary science mission phase will begin on April 4, when
Messenger will start mapping the entire surface of Mercury, a
process that is expected to require around 75,000 images.
Scientists hope the spacecraft will help answer longstanding
mysteries over the planet's geology, formation and history.

While Messenger is the first mission ever to orbit around
Mercury, it is not the first spacecraft to visit the planet.
NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft flew by the planet three times in
the mid-1970s.

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